Abstract
We examined sex and ethnic differences in central fatness, as assessed by waist circumference measurements, in 13 590 Millennium Cohort Study 5-year-olds. Measurements were expressed as z-scores based on reference data from the British Standards Institute. The cohort, especially girls, had larger waist circumference measurements than the reference population. Black children had larger waists, and children from other minority ethnic groups had smaller waists than White children. Girls, and Black children, in the United Kingdom are at particular risk for central fatness. Further research is needed to clarify ethnic and other influences on fat distribution, and the health outcomes associated with central fatness.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the Millennium Cohort families for their participation, the director of the Millennium Cohort Study and colleagues in the management team at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, University of London. We would also like to thank other members of the MCS Child Health Group at the UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK (Helen Bedford, Carly Rich, Jane Ahn, Irina Chis Ster, Leah Li, Anna Pearce, Catherine Law, Catherine Peckham, Jugnoo Rahi, Phillippa Cumberland and Richard Jenkins).
Funding
Lucy Griffiths is supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant 084686/Z/08/A), Carol Dezateux by HEFCE, and Tim Cole by the MRC (G0700961). The Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics is supported in part by the Medical Research Council in its capacity as the MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health (G0400546). Research at the UCL Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children receives a proportion of the funding from the Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres funding scheme. The Millennium Cohort Study is funded by grants to Professor Health Joshi, Director of the study, from the Economic and Social Research Council and a consortium of government funders. The study sponsors played no part in the design, data analysis and interpretation of this study, the writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication and the authors’ work was independent of their funders.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.